pricing

What works for me may not work for you. I like pricing by "time and materials" although I have seen many, many hobbyists selling stuff and making way less than minimum wage. Ask some friends or coworkers what they would pay and you'll probably be closer to the ball park.

Andy

By "solo show", do you mean you have the opportunity to set up a display of just your stuff in a retail space or someone who does retail sales is giving you a chance and wants to know what your stuff sells for or a school is giving a chance to show the stuff, etc.? Go shopping. If nobody is selling stuff like you are doing anywhere near, go to the internet. 3 or 4 times what Chinese stuff sells for, half what the best local stuff sells for. Time + materials + expenses verses retail and hope they don't overlap (too much). Perception is correct, so bigger things cost more, flashier may cost more in the same size. At least get your time back in money. Now you are probably making these things a few at a time in a small kiln. So the time firing and annealing is spread over a few pieces. If you get serious about this you will probably get a bigger kiln and make more at the same time, so the time will be more in the design and layout and less (per piece) in the firing and annealing. Also for some pieces, the process will become more automatic (as in I was making bowls from broken window glass for a charity event; after working out the bugs, even in my small kiln, I could layout 3 or 4 and run the cycle, walking away to other stuff, ignoring it for 6 hours.

I think a lot of the people I've seen who are making less than minimum wage *think* they're using the time and materials formula, but forget to add in the time they spend preparing, marketing, and actually selling their finished work. For every hour I spend on the torch, I spend three more doing work that is related to getting my product prepped, sold and shipped. Not considering that time when you're creating your pricing matrix is a dangerous trap that can sink a new business before it even leaves shore, so to speak.

asking friends for inputs is a sure way of getting some idea of the basic rate...thanx andy..

yes, i do have an opportunity to have an exhibition of just my pcs. An artist friend who's familiar with the art world & has had many shows(different medium) is impressed with my fused glass. she sez that she'll help me have a show.There's nobody in my city making stuff like mine, but, there's one gallery here which has some items in float..all are very functional. serving trays etc. no colored glass at all & none of them are art pcs. the 'perceived value' of an object is so vague & abstract that i'm finding it impossible to arrive at a conclusion. most of the glass & the kiln, I got imported from US to India. If I calucalate my costs & markup accordingly, taking into consideration the sweat, blood & tears, I wld'nt b able to sell anything here, in India ! :-(( thanks Mike

I call it the "perceived value". If it looks like it's worth $50 and you can make it for $1.... sell it for $50 not $2. If it looks like it's worth $1 and it costs you $10 to make, you are out of business!

I would actually strongly suggest NOT selling "as cheaply as you can live with". As Dennis points out, it's about perceived value, not cost. If you're TOO cheap, people will shun your work as being of poor quality...even if every piece is a masterwork. An electrician charging $10 an hour will get less customers than an electrician charging the going rate. So price similar work (especially in your area) and go from there.

Yes, give good value to your customers, but NO don't cheat yourself and devalue your work.

Bryan "just my two cents" Paschke

I'll go further. Unless you can really include everything "you can live with" probably with the advice of a financial advisor, you will end up losing a lot taking this route. I ran my business out of my home for several years and found that with careful and legal choices, I could lower my reported income quite low, so I got to pay lower income and social security taxes while including utilities and repairs on the building in my costs. That would have been fine, if I had been making enough money to have significant savings put in the bank or elsewhere and if I had allocated money for training (probably deductable, in hindsight), neither of which I did, so after a stretch of self-employment, I had coasted to the bottom of heap in terms of up-to-date skills and had no money out there, even in SS, to retire on. If you can't price to make the money you really need, it will hurt in the long run as well as the short. I also will note that I had no health insurance during that time.

I'm in agreement on this. It's one thing if you're starting out as a beginner and selling beginner's work, but if you're experienced and offering a professional product, you should price accordingly, especially if you're fully self-employed.

Being self-employed is very expensive, and lacks a lot of the safety net that is built into outside employment. You have to be your own safety net to keep the first small bump in the road from putting you out of business.

A consideration is that if you are pricing below market value, you will build a clientele of people who are looking to pay below market value. When your prices increase, odds are high that you will lose that clientele. It's a lot better to start with clients who are looking to pay what you're worth, and increase your prices as your skills improve, to keep up with your market value. Build the client base you want from the start; those customers will stay with you, and you will gain more of the kind of clients you want through their word-of-mouth. Your business will get a lot farther based on the word-of-mouth being "he's good" than it will on "he's cheap".

"Kalera Stratton" ha scritto nel messaggio news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com...

I started as glass collector, than I opened a glass gallery and sometimes I make some lampworks, so I was in the 3 different position: consumer, buyer/reseller, sometime producer. I think that it is always a mistake to sell too cheap. It is a wrong start. Try to find the market-price range that you consider correct for the quality and the level of your works. Consider also the number of pieces that you want to sell (higher the number lower the price). Than in that price range fix you pricing on the middle; if your marketing activity will be good and you will have a positive feedback from the market push the prices a little bit higher (a 5%), if not keep them stable or apply a discount for quantity, advanced payments, etc. As buyer/reseller I really don't like to work with craftmen who change or discount their prices too much; right and stable pricing allows a long term cooperation with galleries, shops, customers.

P.S. Sorry for my english, but this is not my mother language

Alex _________________

Well-said, Alex. I have known a few craftspeople who ended up out of business by selling too cheaply, though fortunately most of them learned from their first mistake and were able to make a go of it a second time, after going back to a regular job for a while and getting on their feet again.

Other mistakes I've seen people make is not putting enough into advertising/promoting their studio, and not hiring help when the workload warrants it. I also know one person who hires the help but doesn't pay enough to get committed, skilled, long-term employees; he thinks he's saving money but it's costing him in lost productivity and high turnover. He can afford good assistants but won't hire them; ironic, really.

"Kalera Stratton" ha scritto nel messaggio news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com...

And this kind of businness policy push pricing pressure also to the other producers. Obviously the lower ws prices will be lower prices also for the retail sales and as in chain or a domino the art glass maket will be damaged. It happens in Venice town (in Murano is different, but the story of the factory tours is too long for this post ) where with too many shops of cheap (ugly) glass, often imported, sold for few US$, it is very harder to sell glass of gallery quality (and gallery prices)

Alex